DIY Window Blinds and Weekending

I'm exhausted from my three-day weekend - it appears that "relaxation" is not something I've included on my long "Furlough Friday" to-do list. M. and I scurried around and knocked out some tasks around the house like a boss (or, I suppose, bosses). On Friday, I jogged (sort of - the insane heat forced me to walk now and then), and spent a good three hours refreshing the trim paint in our kitchen. Then Saturday, I set to work creating some new blinds for our kitchen windows, to complement the new backsplash/paint/countertops we have going on (full reveal post to come soon, I promise!). This was an idea I got from a Young House Love blog post. They called it a "15 minute window shade" project, but it took me over 3 hours and required some assistance from M. Then again, I don't DIY for a living the way they do. And either way, I am so, so thrilled with how it all turned out:

Here is an old "before" photo, where you can kind of see the curtains we used to have - cheap, shabby chic-ish curtains from Target that were now more grey than white.

 

Here is where we were starting yesterday - the old curtains had been thrown away, the curtain rods removed/holes patched, and the walls painted with Benjamin Moore's Nimbus Grey. Oh, and also lovely fresh trim in Behr's Creamy White.

M. was working on his own project while I got going with the shades, but more on that another day - it's not quite done yet.

I measured my windows carefully, then added 2 inches to the width and 4 inches to the length to account for hemming my fabric and mounting the shade at the top to a piece of 1 X 2. So, for example, I wanted my shade to cover an area of 30 inches wide (from inside frame to inside frame) and 25 inches long for the larger window on the left. So I cut my fabric to 32 inches by 29 inches. The other two were the same length, but only 22.25 inches wide, so I cut that fabric to width of 24.25 inches.

Here is one piece of fabric, ready to go. Note the iron at the ready? That's because no sewing needles were harmed in the making of these shades. Instead, I used Heat and Bond for iron-on hems:

 

 

I applied the tape along each side of the fabric (paper side up), ran the iron over it fairly quickly (directions say 2 seconds), and allowed it to cool a little. Then I peeled the paper off the adhesive, folded the fabric over, and applied the iron again, for longer this time (8 seconds). As you can see, Cinderella was helping me.

 

Then I repeated the process on the ends of the fabric.

And voila! A nice, neat panel of fabric, ready for hanging (that's a Finn hiding under there).

Once all three panels of fabric were hemmed, I cut a 1 X 2 down into three pieces the same width as the panels, and mounted the fabric over it using a staple gun.

 

Then it was time to hang the panels, but I immediately ran into a problem. In holding up the shades, I realized they wouldn't fit - there were small tabs sticking out of the window frame up at the top that I hadn't accounted for when I was measuring:

 

Just as M. was gathering up his jig saw to try to come to the rescue, I realized that I could just pop the plastic tabs out:

Ah, much better. Not sure what those tabs are actually for, but I hope they aren't important!

 

To mount the shades, we pre-drilled holes into the 1 X 2, and in the process, realized that we needed to do something about the fabric. Because of the way the shade is mounted, the fabric runs between the 1 X 2 and the window frame, and we were worried that it would rip or bunch up when we screwed the wood in (this happened a little with the first hole that we pre-drilled). So once our holes were pre-drilled (making sure the fabric was out of the way), we made small holes in the fabric over the screw holes. Then I dabbed a little clear nail polish around the holes to make sure the fabric wouldn't fray or run down the line:

Trust me, there's a hole there.

Then the entire thing was screwed into the top of the window frame - two screws for the smaller windows, and three for the larger one. Beware - because the screws need to go through the thick part of the 1 X 2 (so, 2 inches) and into the window frame, long screws are needed for this. This was something I hadn't prepared for, but luckily we had enough spare screws of the right size on hand.

 

And this is what we ended up with:

I'm still in shock that somehow, all three shades are the same length. I was SURE that somehow things would get uneven during the whole process, even though I spent about an hour of my three + hour project carefully measuring.

I love how they turned out - I think they add a great little flash of color when you look from the living room into the kitchen, and they coordinate nicely with our new backsplash (which, I swear, I will show you one day!). And the cost couldn't be beat:

Fabric (2 yards, on sale for 50% off): $23.50
1 X 2: $1.15
Heat and Bond: $4

Three shades for under $30!!

A few other things I can't resist sharing from the weekend:

Finn went to see Turbo in 3-D with a friend on Friday - I can't even begin to tell you how excited he was about this! I picked him up from camp before 1 p.m. - oh, the thrill of leaving early! And for a play date with his best friend?! He was bouncing off the walls. Anyway, the movie was a hit, as was the play date, and Finn has spent most of the last 48 hours wearing his 3-D glasses.

I made these blueberry muffins. If they taste half as good as they look, I will be in heaven. I had to fight M. and Lucy off with a stick, so determined were they in sneaking one before dinner (and yes, that is a peek at the new backsplash!).

I took all this (crazy) squash...

chopped it up...

and turned it into this Zucchini Gratin from Our Best Bites.

It was fabulous - M. and I scarfed it up. I made the kids each try a bite. Finn gagged. Lucy actually threw up. So... mixed results. But a win for the grown-up crowd, and I highly recommend it.

While I cooked, the kids tore apart the house and piled many toys, blankets, and themselves in the middle of the living room:

Whew, I'm exhausted just typing this! And I didn't even mention the kitchen shelves M. is refinishing, or the loads of trim we painted (once you start, it's so hard to stop!), the pool time, the grocery shopping, the laundry...

Thank god it's almost Monday?

Final Christmas Rundown: Kids' Gifts and Cookies

Kid Gifts

I'm not feeling any inspiration for a post describing the kids' Christmas gifts. THEY seem excited enough about them, thankfully, but I'm just sort of "meh." I guess because I'm not 6? Anyway, the short version is that they got toys, and they like them. I would recommend them to others for purchase, if pressed to comment on that. I know that Finn and Lucy will play with these toys for about 3 more days, and then abandon them in favor of whining at me that they "have no toys" and "want to watch T.V." But so far, they've been pleasantly "into" these toys.

In brief, Lucy got a lot (A LOT) of Disney princess stuff (Santa brought no less than 3 costumes, among other things), and Finn got a new race track (a Nano Speed Turbo set, which is new for us, but I refused to have Santa bring a Hot Wheels set because they are all designed to stick to a wall) and an Imaginext Space Shuttle. They were happy enough for kids that kept finding new things to add to their Christmas Wish Lists as little as two days before Christmas (as if) - I was sure there would be disappointment, but neither one of them brought up anything they wish they had received instead.

There were also other random small things, like new Magic Tree House books, jewelry, Monster Trucks, etc.

OH! I almost forgot that there is ONE kid gift I am excited about. We bought our very first (and hopefully only, for a long time) family gaming system - a Wii. It was our gift to the kids (and ourselves). We got the original one, not that new confusing one they've been advertising lately (WiiU?). We have a Sports and Sports Resort game pack, and we also picked up Just Dance 4. We've all been having a lot of fun with it, more than I thought we would. Lucy's attention for playing is still only about about 2.5 minutes, but Finn can already do a lot of things independently/intuitively, so I'm sure she'll catch on in the next year or so.

Oh oh! I also meant to mention a couple of things we got for nieces/nephews that I would really REALLY recommend. The first is the Richard Scarry Busy Town board game:

I like it so much that I inadvertently got it for my sister Kristin's kids both this year and last year - luckily I had a sneaking suspicion that I had done this, checked (and confirmed), and was able to turn around and give it to my sister Stacey's daughter instead. Busy Town for everyone! It is a cute game that is way less frustrating for kids (and parents) than Chutes and Ladders or Candyland (no going ALL the way back to the beginning for anyone).

I also found a couple of non-traditional "Princess as the strong heroine" books that I gave to my nieces Penny and JoJo, and now I'm thinking they may need to be a birthday gift for Lucy. They are MUCH better/more interesting than the drivel Disney puts out. One book is called The Apple Pip Princess, and the other is The Paper Bag Princess.

Finally, my newest niece, Alexa, is just a year old (ALMOST! A few days and counting!), and she is preceded by two much older brothers. Her house is sadly bereft of girly things. To help her start the battle against the hockey equipment and Nerf guns, we gave her this hilariously adorable Little People Wonder Woman toy:

Is that not one of the cutest things you've ever seen for a 1-year-old?

She also got a Hello Kitty hoodie, because every girl should have one of those.

Cookies

Since I'm ready to be done with writing about Christmas, I'm going to mash my Christmas cookie report-out onto the bottom of this post. I went nuts on Pinterest, pinning about a dozen different cookie and candy recipes with the intention of making them all. Reality set in, and I had to scale back my plans a bit. But I still managed to make about 6 different types of cookies. They were all good (hard to beat the butter-sugar-flour-vanilla combination), but some were definite keepers. I'm just going to post a link to the original recipe for each one rather than including the recipes themselves here (credit where credit due, yo), but I will make a note if I substantially changed anything.

Roll Out Sugar Cookies: This is my second year making these (pictures from last year are here). They are delicious, and fun for the kids to decorate. For frosting, I just used the recipe on the Dominos confectioner's sugar box. I made a double batch and then used Wilton gel food coloring to make a bunch of different colors. I will definitely continue making these.

Chocolate Roll Out Sugar Cookies: This was my first time making these. The dough was really hard to work with (I chilled it for the required amount of time, but it almost seemed TOO long, because I had a tough time rolling it out), but the cookies tasted awesome, so I'll probably make these again. These were decorated at the same time we did the regular roll out sugar cookies.

Soft Almond Sugar Cookies: These are not roll out cookies; instead, they are formed into balls and then rolled in Turbinado sugar. They were so soft and yummy - another definite keeper.

Chocolate Chunk Peppermint Pudding Cookies: These were SO GOOD. This is a recipe where I had to make some substitutions. I couldn't find Devil's Food pudding, so I used regular chocolate pudding. I also searched high and low for the Andes Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips the recipe called for, but could not find them anywhere. So instead, I bought a few bars of Ghirardelli Dark Chocolate Peppermint bark and chopped them up. They worked great, and the cookies turned out to be one of my favorites.

Thumbprint Cookies: I think these were my absolute favorite cookies. I made them with strawberry preserves, apricot preserves, and lemon curd. They were awesome. I may need to double the batch next year.

Deep Dark Chocolate Cookies: These were almost too rich for me. I guess I prefer a little flour in my cookie (they are flourless, which is great for the gluten-free crowd). Not sure I'll make again.

Peppermint Kiss Sugar Cookies: I think I prefer the version of these cookies that are made with peanut butter cookies and regular Hershey's Kisses. Too minty for me, but the kids loved them. I'm on the fence about making them again.

So there you have it - a rundown on the 6 - no wait, 7 - God, I have a problem - batches of Christmas cookies I made this past year.

These pictures were taken when I was only 3 cookie types in to the baking process. Also, what does it say about me that I wrote much of this post while watching the latest Biggest Loser episode?

I may need an intervention next year.

Table Woes Ended

I am lounging by a fire, eating the last of my Christmas Chocolate Toffee Bites from Moonstruck Chocolate Co. (thanks, Chip and Jennifer!! They were fabulous!), drinking wine, and keeping M. company while the Packers kick the Vikings' collective hiney. It's a nice Saturday night.

It was also a pretty awesome day because... I got a new dining room table!! Yay for me! Some of my long-time readers may remember that more than a year ago, M. and I held a yard sale and sold off a bunch of house-cluttering objects, including our dining room table set (not cluttering objects, per se, but old, not the right look for us, and woefully small for our expanded family). At that point, we were left without a dining room table entirely, and we were reduced to eating all meals at the kids' small table. Shortly thereafter, I ordered a dining set (table and 4 chairs), a server (for my wedding china!), and two additional matching chairs from Target. After a couple of weeks, we saw relief from cramped dinners in sight when we came home to several large boxes deposited on our walkway.

UNFORTUNATELY, after lots of heavy lifting (and what M. swears is the start of all his recent back problems) and assembly, we discovered that the table was actually broken. The kind of broken that cannot be fixed or overlooked (aka a crack through the entire middle panel of the table). I spent about an hour on the phone with Target, FINALLY arranged for someone to come pick the table and 4 chairs up (since they were sold as a set), cried a little, and went to bed. In the morning, we dragged out the old, spare dining table we had hanging around (only possible because it was drop-leaf and folded down to a furniture item that was only 6-inches wide and could be placed against any wall) and put it to use. I'm so glad we had it, but it was a) rickety, b) waterstained, c) not an extension table (what we wanted), and d) rickety. Did I mention it was rickety? We kept the two extra dining chairs from Target (upholstered), and bought 4 dark wood chairs (cheaper and more kid friendly) to use with our back-up table. This post has some photos of our original dining room table, the "extra/spare" table we ended up using, and the server from the Target set that we kept.

Since then, we have faithfully used tablecloths (to cover the watermark) and accompanied every meal with hushed yells to the kids to "Stop jiggling the table! I mean it!" We've also suffered through lots of spilled drinks, and the awkwardness of trying to fit two more people at the table when we (oh so rarely) have guests.

BUT NO LONGER. Salvation has come, in the form of the World Market Mahogany Verona Trestle Table. My parents actually gifted us with a rather sizable Target gift card to encourage us to buy a new dining room table (perhaps because they are pretty much our only guests, and are usually the people we are awkwardly trying to fit around the table with us). Gun shy about ordering another table to be delivered to the house, and not able to find anything remotely close to the kind of table we wanted at Target, I stumbled on this table at the World Market after spotting a Pinterest link for a coffee table. People, if you're not on Pinterest, you should be. It's a wealth of serendipitious links and good ideas (though you do need to be able to spot them/sift through to find them). Anywho, found the table, which was on sale, and also had 126 customer reviews that were all unanimously positive. Said table was on backorder, but I (as the old commercial used to say) "let my fingers do the walking" and called around to some local stores to see if any of them had it in stock. As luck would have it, the Chevy Chase store did, and M. and I caravanned it down with the kids to pick it up today (saving us $100 in shipping costs to boot).

Now it is here, and set up, and I am in love. So is M. Is it wrong to love a table? Probably, but I do. It matches perfectly with our cheap Target wood chairs, and the beautiful Target server (that matched our original ordered-but-broken Target table). It is BIG (to us), fitting at least 8 when the extension is in place. And it is sturdy - I predict NO WOBBLES in our future. Maybe less spilled milk (but eh, maybe not. Kids are messy). And best of all, we still have that wonderful Target gift card from my parents to buy lots of wonderful Target things, like new (BIGGER!) tablecloths, and clothes!

Here is the table, tell me you love it:

Now we just have to get someone to take the old "spare" table off our hands...

Ghosts and Cows, But Not Ghost Cows

A few photos that I meant to post over the weekend, but didn't get around to because M. and I had a Sunday afternoon date (yay!) that involved looking at hardwood flooring samples (also yay!), during which I came down with a raging case of what turned out to be strep throat (not so yay). So I am home from work today, three doses of antibiotics into my course, and steadfastly ignoring my work computer so I can "convalesce" (aka fool around on the internet) some more. Also, I would like to publically thank M. for being such a rock star during this - he put the kids to bed last night and Sunday night, got them both up and out the door this morning, cooked dinner for everyone last night (including some "easy on the throat" invalid-type food for me), made ice cream from scratch with Finn, and picked up the entire house to get ready for the cleaning lady who came this morning - all without complaint, and all without me asking. He just KNEW all the things that needed to get done (and then some), and did them. The hottie I married in grad school is also a GREAT guy - lucky me!

Alright, on to the photos. First up, a special edition of "Breakfast for Dinner," jazzed up a bit from an idea I found on Pinterest (from here: http://www.gourmetmomonthego.com/2008/10/ghostly-pancakes.html). I pinned it to use around Halloween, but couldn't resist trying it out a little early - Ghost Pancakes!

Isn't it cute?

Lucy's Plate

Finn's Plate - can you tell he's an egg lover?

Finn doing some homework from his Jumpstart program last week:

Erasing so earnestly.

Learning to use tally marks to count.

Not to be outdone, Lucy got her own time in front of the camera:

Hiding behind her hair.

Spacey eyes.

A smile, for once.

Followed soon after by the more common camera pout.

We took the kids to a former dairy farm that was converted to a "Mooseum" that is near our house. We all enjoyed the little (free!) interactive museum, and left feeling a bit hungry for some dairy-rich food:

Milking a fake cow

Arts and crafts

Misuse of the bean bag toss game board

But so cute!

An action shot of the bean bag game being properly used.

Finally, some photos of the kids from around the grounds and the nearby playground: